Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution for Marcellus Williams Tuesday.
ST. LOUIS — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution for Marcellus Williams Tuesday, just hours before Williams was scheduled to die for the 1998 murder of a former newspaper reporter.
The governor also announced Tuesday that he was appointing a five-member board to review new information in the case.
“A sentence of death is the ultimate, permanent punishment. To carry out the death penalty, the people of Missouri must have confidence in the judgment of guilt, ” said Greitens.
Williams’ execution had been set for Tuesday evening at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Mo. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001 for stabbing to death former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle, 42, during a robbery at her University City home. DNA testing of the murder weapon, conducted in 2016, was inconclusive.
The state ACLU chapter applauded the move.
«We hope that Mr. Williams’ case will show Missouri’s elected officials where our justice system is broken and needs to be fixed, » Missouri’s ACLU said in a statement Tuesday.
Williams’ attorneys have appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, seeking a new hearing or the commutation of his sentence to life in prison. They’ve also asked Greitens for clemency.
Attorney Kent Gipson has said that DNA testing conducted in December using techniques that were not available at the time of the killing showed DNA found on the knife matches an unknown man, but not Williams. He also cited previous DNA testing of hairs found from Gayle’s shirt and fingernails that also excluded Williams, and said footprints at the scene did not match Williams.
The new evidence «means in our mind the actual killer is not him, » Gipson told The Associated Press last week.
Loree Anne Paradise, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Josh Hawley, said the office remains confident that Williams is guilty based on other evidence in the case.
Gipson said Williams’ conviction was based on the testimony of two convicted felons who were out for a $10,000 reward. One was Williams’ former girlfriend and the other was his former cellmate.
In addition to the murder conviction, Williams is also serving consecutive terms of life in prison for robbery, and 30 years each for burglary and weapons crimes.
After several years of being among the states with the highest number of executions, the pace in Missouri has slowed considerably. The only execution in this state this year was in January, when Mark Christeson was put to death for killing a woman and her two children.
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Contributing: The Associated Press
